Stellaris - my thoughts maybe rambling. What are your thoughts?

[Spaceman78]

Hello everyone,

I have spent many hours (1118 hours) in this game. Since that time, I have build a love hate relationship with it. I would like to share my thoughts with you all, to see the reactions and to gather the opinions. It will be hard to put these words into thoughts, but I will try.

Although I keep the game updated and have all the DLCs., I think my last serious game was with Federations. I have tried a bit of Necrophage and have not tried Nemesis.

Sometimes I wonder whether my expectations of Stellaris is too high. I like to compare Stellaris with other Space 4 x games, which Master of Orion 2 is one that I am most fond of.
Master of Orion 2 has fewer races than Stellaris, but those that you have are instantly recognizable and full of flavor. I mean if I say Meklar or Klackon then you would know what the race and the shipset looks like.
With Stellaris you can create different empires with their own race, ethics, civics and orgin. However those have little flavor for me. The way of playing whether a hivemind, megacorp or standard empires have differences mainly in stats and percentages, perhaps different starting conditions, but the manner of play is mainly the same.
Well how about Fanatic Purifers? They play hyper aggressively and there is no need for diplomacy.
An exception that brings freshness to the game is the origin Void Dwellers that forgo planets and need to settle in habitats in space. It is so refreshing not to be reliant on the planets and settle (mostly) wherever your like.
You play the game either min max style so to win in multiplayer or you role play in single player using the fantasy of the why and how you have created your empire. For role-players if you happen to meet another empire, you will need to use your imagination to think of the backstory of another empire. The game does not do that for you. And that is quite a pity.
Other Paradox titles base their worlds on the real world. There is no need to explain the backstory or history of the United Kingdom or India. In Stellaris those empires are fictional. The strength of Stellaris is to create an empire you like, but without its story or history the empire is an empty shell. Why does this empire have the civic Exalted Priesthood and is in conjunction with Citizen Service? Why does it have the traits strong? Etc.
It would be nice if in the future somehow the empires would come with their pre-generated histories, which would influence their own actions and decisions, which would accumulate in their own backstory. That way you would care for another empire. Care for your allies or hate your enemies.

DLCs .. many DLCs in the past and many DLCs in the future. That is the reality. DLCs adds a lot of gimmicks, but what are their impact really? Nemesis has espionage. Exciting! Really? How much impact does it have? Can you win with espionage? DLCs add a lot of nice gimmicks, but they are snippets of potential that do not become a coherent whole. Paradox adds one gimmick, forget about it and go to the next gimmick. Hive mind and megacorp. Nice they were added. What about their future? Will new civics be added?

War! Maybe not the only way to win, but if you ask others what is the main way to win or to interact with other empires, then it is war. There could be trade, diplomacy etc.. but in the end it is always war.
Diplomacy.. is there any meaningful diplomacy or conversation with another empire? No, not really, they exist only for you to conquer them.
And war can be a cumbersome process. I am not talking about the act of war itself, but the aftermath. Even if you win the war and gain 10 new planets or systems, it is no fun in managing all 25 of your planets. It is a real slog. Your hands are full in manually managing the planets.
How about automation. What automation? The Custodians are changing the Economic AI, so hopefully that can become different in the future.

The start is fun; it is exciting exploring new systems, discovering new anomalies etc. The real slog is when everything has been discovered and everything has been settled with your empire borders touching your neighbors. Ok sure, you have things that keep you busy like building new districts, espionage, diplomacy in the Galactic Community, but how much of those are fun instead of being busy work? Waiting for the real action. Waiting for the mid life crises or end life crises, which are the real meat. The way to the real meat is just trying to find ways to spend time.

So many words. But what am I trying to say? Stellaris has a lot of potential. Its many DLCs added a ton of new features, creating a large flat pancake without a lot of depth. There will be a new Aquatic species pack which I think I will be buying because I cannot help myself. However I have to admit if that new toy is played with and found wanting.. what is next except waiting for the next new shining DLC? Hopefully it will be different in the future with the Custodian team. Stellaris is not a new game, but would you say it is at its early mid or mid shelf life?
If its the latter, then hopefully it would improve soon. Otherwise we will hope that the Devs will learn from Stellaris 1 the experiment, before building Stellaris 2.

 

[Eled the Worm Tamer]

Stellaris has the GURPS problem.
Yes you can stat anything, do anything. But it all ends out feeling like it's made out of the same stuff.

 

[Bezborg]

I will never forget how I pitched Stellaris to my friends when it was still in development, and when it got released

"This is beyond our wildest dreams, it has everything, it's like a combination of all the other games we like". I remember the stuff I was excited about: Huge galaxy, ability to make a galaxy-spanning empire, all the various modes of transportation/propulsion (this was a huge one for me, I was mind-blown by it), having different owner of planets in the same system so you could do a cultural influence war, not just fleets and armies...

All these things were amazing to me. And I remember saying "imagine what it will be in a few years".

Well how interesting and tragic that they scaled down precisely on the elements that most appealed to me. This is truly a rare and unlucky occurence, that my brain is in complete dissonance with all the game leaders of Stellaris in the last 6 years haha. Oh welll...

I agree wholeheartedly that Stellaris was born to rule them all, and has not lived up to its potential. It got fat, bloated, but not better. At least in my humble opinion, I realize a lot of people see incredible improvement in the various DLCs... But for me personally, nothing has been able to capture that enthusiasm I had in the much earlier stages where it was fun to build a vast galactic empire. It's lost that, for me. Which doesn't really matter, but as long as we're sharing thoughts...

 

[Pancakelord]

large flat pancake without a lot of depth.

I do love fluffy pancakes.

IMO stellaris is starting to go grey, and it's back is beginning to ache, but it's still got a lot of life left in it. But it needs to keep in shape and get a prostate exam. The game can't go on just duct taping on random stuff DLC after DLC. The custodian project is a good one, they recognise the game needs to have its wrinkles smoothed over. But it's not a panacea.

Making small adjustments can improve the game here and there, but there's still large holes in it where features simply don't integrate well with eachother, or at all (e.g. pop Political Power - likely an alpha test for vicky 3 that was never really finished for stellaris as it's largely unused right now - despite the script potential being fully developed), leaving the game full of "island" mechanics. Small things interesting on their own but largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

Maybe with something like v3.5 or v4.0 we'll see some other big overhaul, and push to integrate more mechanics, but IMO this state of affairs is ultimately a byproduct of the Optional DLC model - if you aren't expected to buy X, then X cannot be a part of the core gameplay loop in the same way as a base-game mechanic would.

• (Arguably it's the fate of any long term development project, look at Warframe, with all its free updates [some effectively rival DLCs] - that game is fun (if you like grinding/ horde shooters), and has a lot of content but severely suffers from disconnected-mechanics-itus.)

Likely, any sequel will pull a CK2>3 and include most of the incumbent features as core mechanics, tightly integrated with one another - then after a few years of disjointed DLCs, that game will suffer from the same lack of integrated features (even if it has more features overall).

 

[Zenicetus]

I enjoy "asymmetrical" 4X games like MOO2 or the Endless Space series with wildly different factions that have to be played differently, but the trade-off is limited number of factions, and eventually too much predictability. Replay value is limited after you've mastered each alien race. and seen the scripted storylines.

Stellaris is a (mostly) symmetrical 4X game that lacks this kind of personality with strongly scripted factions. However, the positive side of the trade-off is that it's great for role-playing favorite sci-fi ideas from books, TV, and movies as a singleplayer game. I've created factions based on things like the Kzin cat warriors from the Niven novels, the Conjoiner group minds from the Reynolds novels, and Saberhagen Berserker killing machines. Not perfect recreations, but you can get pretty close with the different setup options.

This is what keeps Stellaris on my hard drive. There are things I don't love about it, like the war goals system and the messy way combat is handled, but there's enough role-play value to keep me interested. Role-play does require that you bring something of yourself to the game, instead of requiring the game to supply everything for you.

If that's the kind of game you prefer it's understandable, and there are other options out there. Endless Space 2 is a good asymmetric 4X space game with imaginative alien designs and scripted storylines. The game systems are more basic than Stellaris but I've enjoyed playing it. I think Distant Worlds has scripted alien races with storylines (I haven't played it), and there is a new version 2 out soon.